Startup SiSense Raises $30 Million In Financing, Plans Channel Expansion

Big data analytics startup SiSense has collected $30 million in Series C financing and the company plans to use some of that funding to build a channel program.

"We're looking to increase our investment in the channel as a force multiplier," said CEO Amit Bendov in an interview. "We want to increase our market share and we see the chance to use the channel to accelerate our growth."

SiSense develops business analytics, reporting and dashboard software that nontechnical information workers can use to combine data from multiple sources for analysis and visualization. In February, the company launched SiSense 5 with new capabilities for analyzing terabytes of data from mobile devices.

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The company is one of a number of next-generation business analytics software developers, along with Tableau Software and QlikTech, that's challenging established products such as SAP's Business Objects and IBM's Cognos in the big data analytics arena.

While SiSense has lacked a formal channel program to this point, about 25 percent of the company's revenue already comes from systems integrators and resellers. Bendov said those deals have been one-off opportunistic cases where either the company was approached by a solution provider to resell the vendor's product or a customer asked SiSense to work with a solution provider.

A number of ISVs are building SiSense's business intelligence software into their applications. "That's a great distribution channel for us," Bendov said. "It's a growth trend today because almost every application needs business intelligence."

SiSense will use some of the new financing to expand its sales, marketing and customer support operations. Bendov said that includes building a formal channel program and hiring a channel management team to manage the company's alliance partners. The CEO said the program would include partner training, a formal pricing plan, and sales and marketing resources.

Founded in 2010 and based in Tel Aviv, Israel, SiSense has recorded triple-digit subscription revenue growth for the last three years and recently opened a U.S. headquarters in New York.

PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2014